Frauengefängnis

www.eattheblinds.com

There's a scene in Barbed Wire Dolls that is so perfectly horrible it should be cinematic legend. It's a young girl's flashback of her father (played by Franco himself) attempting to rape her. The entire scene is shot with Franco's patented wandering zoom, a lens slathered with vaseline and a slow motion effect you have to see to believe.

Doing double-duty as "Cinematographer," Franco apparently didn't realize you could change the frame rate on the camera and decided slow motion is best acquired through slow motion acting. Yup, actors pretending to go through the motions in real time slow motion. Hilarious.

For someone who hates his own movies and wishes he'd directed Citizen Kane, Franco's taste is not nearly as bad as the choices he consistently makes behind the camera. Within the realm of bad movies, if Ed Wood Jr. is Orson Welles, then Jess Franco is quite possibly John Ford. High praise, indeed. Barbed Wire Dolls is a B- movie with so many juicy tidbits of ineptness, tasteless raunch, camp and cliché you can't help but love this senseless mess. See the slow motion genius for yourself:

Now some people are complaining about the lack of plot, however there is a plot; a weak one, but yes it is there. Most characters are pulled from Ilsa - The Wicked Warden (another Franco movie) and yet all I wanted was for Dyanne Thorne to play a cameo. As a fan of exploitation movies such as Ilsa, I was hoping this was going to be something familiar. And by 'something familiar' I don't mean the same characters and same set. I'm looking for new torture, new sleaze and the like. Other then super fake electrical shocks there is none of that. Just badly dubbed naked girls who pretend to masturbate. If that's what I was looking for then I suppose I would have to have rated this movie more then a 4/10 but it was a little to soft-core for me. And for that I apologize.

Lurid does not begin to describe this Jesús Franco women-in-prison film. Lina Romay is sent to prison for murdering her father. The prison is run by a jackboot-wearing female warden and a serial killer prison doctor who killed the real prison doctor and is now posting as said doctor. There was a whole cycle of women in prison films in the 70s and 80s, and this one probably had more nudity and torture than any I've seen before, though I have to admit I have not yet seen SS HELL CAMP, which is supported to be the most extreme of this cycle. I watched a beautifully restored Blu-ray of this film from Full Moon Features, but this film is utter crap. However, it is definitely a film that's so bad it's good, the most hilarious moment being a flashback to when Romay kills her father. To save money, instead of shooting the scene in slow motion, director Franco has the actors fighting with one another as if they were moving in slow motion. The scene is so badly done I could not believe what I was seeing! Making matters even more bizarre, Franco was dating Romay at the time and played the abusive father. It's a scene that has to be seen to be believed. There are so many other bizarre scenes, such as one of the prisoners masturbating while holding a lit cigarette, with ashes falling on her genitalia or the reoccurring electric shock treatment scenes. There's really just no describing this film, but I feel like I should give this terrible movie an extra half a star for the entertainment value I got out of the terrible bit of filmmaking.

Well, I didn't go into this film expecting anything over and above the usual sleaze from prolific director Jess Franco, and while I've certainly seen worse films from the director; this isn't exactly a highlight for him either. Barbed Wire Dolls is another one of those sleazy 'women in prison' in films, and aside from the obvious implications of this sort of film; Franco has seen fit to make things even sleazier by way of things such as a lesbian warden and a whole host of sadistic torture sequences. There's basically no plot in this film, although there is a little slither involving a young woman and her father, whom she is believed to have murdered. This plot never takes centre focus, however, and Franco seems keener to continually show filth, which is no bad thing if you ask me. However, there's only really so far a film like this can go with no plot to speak of, and the fact that Franco didn't care at all about telling a story is shown best at the end, when it just 'ends' without any resolution. Still, sleaze fans are likely to get a lot out of this film as there's naked chicks, violence, lesbians, sadism etc, and while I don't rate this too highly; I can at least say I enjoyed watching it. What?

A sick mind, or a million dollars . . . Which is better? Currently I only have the sick mind: and this movie feeds that fairly well! The version I saw was 81 minutes instead of the 90 minute full length film: but still, I would have to inform you to NOT use the comment from, Quebec, Canada. Because, the lack of 9 minutes probably would not have deleted scenes of any loot from a robbery, or some insurance whatever, or information about a woman in prison for killing her lover: none of those statements was correct from what I saw. There was a prisoner who killed her father, and one who killed her brother. But . . . You'll have to watch to find out what really took place about one of those killings. And let me tell you about the female warden, Monica Swinn; she may not have been as sexy as Brigitte Nielsen's portrayal of a warden, but Monica still had appeal, and did very well with being a mean bitch. The eyepiece she wears is a good touch, too, along with the Nazi book she reads. And though her voice was dubbed, that voice was well chosen. The warden loves seeing nude prisoners get mistreated; and when you see the nudity, you're seeing a film much better then your average soft-core movie. You will also see a great looking old prison; or it's a castle by the sea? And finally, you'll see the jungle area between the prison and the sea where an escape takes place. But . . . the ending is not your typical Hollywood bullsh*t.